A-Level English Literature: the metaphysical poets - Donne, Marvell and Herbert

Seventeenth-century poetry by John Donne, Andrew Marvell and George Herbert is regularly set for A level English Literature, whether as a poetry text in its own right or as a source of comparison in papers on love and on religious experience. Because all three poets have been out of copyright for centuries, this material can print their lines in full and ask you to read them closely, as an examiner expects you to do.

The poems covered are Donne's 'The Sunne Rising', 'The Flea', 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' and two Holy Sonnets, 'Death be not proud' and 'Batter my heart'; Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'; and Herbert's 'Virtue', 'The Pulley' and 'Love' ('Love bade me welcome'). Donne is quoted in the spelling of the 1633 edition, so you meet the texts as scholarly editions print them.

The questions concentrate on what makes this poetry distinctive. You work through the metaphysical conceit - the lovers as a pair of compasses, the flea as a marriage bed - and ask what each detail contributes rather than simply naming the device. You follow Donne's dramatic openings and arguments with a silent listener, Marvell's poem built like a syllogism, and the paradoxes that join the sacred and the erotic in the Holy Sonnets. Herbert's poems show the same wit turned to devotion: a pun that carries a theology, a refrain reversed in the final stanza, a dialogue that ends in a plain act of acceptance.

Critical reception is part of the material too. Samuel Johnson named these writers the 'metaphysical poets' in 1779 and complained that their most heterogeneous ideas were 'yoked by violence together'; T. S. Eliot argued in 1921 that they fused thought and feeling. You practise treating such views as arguments to test against particular lines, which is what the assessment objective on different interpretations rewards, and you place the poems in the religious and scientific contexts of their age.

The material offers a quiz of twelve questions with one defensible answer each and an explanation after every answer, twelve flashcards on terms, critics and key lines, and a printable written work of eight open questions, from close analysis of a printed extract to comparison of Donne and Herbert, each with a model answer and the key points a strong response should include.

• Analyse metaphysical conceits such as the compasses and the flea, explaining what each detail contributes
• Follow the argument structure of dramatic love poems, including Marvell's if-but-therefore form
• Explain paradox and the joining of sacred and erotic language in Donne's Holy Sonnets
• Read Herbert's devotional poems for wordplay, refrain and dialogue
• Evaluate Johnson's and Eliot's views of the metaphysical poets against particular lines
• Use religious and scientific contexts of 1590–1680 where they explain the poems

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the DfE A level English Literature subject content (poetry, including poetry written before 1900). Quotations: Donne from H. J. C. Grierson's edition of the Poems (1912, 1633 spelling); Marvell and Herbert from the Oxford Book of English Verse (1900); Johnson from 'Life of Cowley' (1779).